Students as consumers:

the market for essays

Dan Rigby

Kelvin Balcombe

Michael Burton

Ian Bateman

Abay Mulatu

From the Abstract:

Forms of plagiarism are changing as detection systems and patterns of plagiarism co-evolve. The most
significant development in recent years has been the widespread adoption of the TurnItIn scanning system.
While this system may deter some potential plagiarisers, they also have the option of adaptation. One such
form of adaptation is to shift away from a ‘copy and paste’ approach to plagiarism toward the ‘contract
cheating’ market. This market provides bespoke, original material which will not be identified as plagiarised
by TurnItIn.

The Contract Cheating market (Lancaster and Clarke, 2006) was estimated to be worth £200m in 2006. It
is a market with many particular and interesting features. It is an illicit market in which there is strong
information asymmetry. In most cases it is very difficult for the novice purchaser to discern the quality of
the product that will be delivered (if any is delivered at all). The crucial point about the Contract Cheating
form of plagiarism is that if the work is provided from a “reputable” company and is therefore original
then it will not be detectable via TurnItIn.

The evidence regarding the scale of the Contract Cheating problem mainly comes from the supply side -
the number of companies, their turnover, etc. There is very little information on the demand side. This is
partly because of illicit nature of the good purchased but also, we suspect, because of the extremely low
levels of detection for work sourced in this way.

The research reported here is concerned with the demand for coursework provided by Contract Cheating
organisations. It represents a first foray into this area to analyse the decision to buy such material and how
this decision is affected by the price and quality of the work and how the valuations of such coursework
are affected by the risk and penalties associated with its submission, as well as the characteristics of the
buyers themselves. The research reported here uses choice experiments to address students’ willingness to
buy essays.
Respondents in a choice experiment are presented with repeated choice situations. Each option which
makes up the choice situation comprises a series of attributes. By (systematically) varying the levels of
these attributes the choices presented are varied. Respondents are asked to report which of the options
they prefer. In this study students were asked to consider essays which differed in terms of 4 attributes:
price, grade, risk and penalty...

With sufficient responses across a sufficiently wide range of choice situations, one can analyse the implicit
weight given to attributes and their levels in the choices that have been made. Further, one can analyse how
the attributes are traded off against each other. The inclusion of a cost attribute allows estimation of the
monetary value of changes in levels of the other attributes to survey participants.

Students recruited to the study were always presented with a “buy none” option: they were never forced to
‘buy’ an essay. To make the choice situations as realistic as possible survey participants had to be presented
with essay choices related to a specific piece of assessed work that was due to be submitted shortly
thereafter. Students were recruited at 3 universities using this criterion. It was made clear that the research
was unequivocally based on confidentiality, and had been approved by the University’s Research Ethics
Committee.

We find that 50% of the students surveyed in each of the 3 universities indicate a willingness to buy essays
on one or more occasion. Analysis of the survey choices allows the implicit value of the essays of differing
grades to be identified. These range between £164 for a 2(ii), £212 for a 2(i) and £307 for a 1st class essay.
We find that the students’ choices are significantly affected by the levels of risk and the penalty associated
with the essays – the value of the essays declines as the probability of detection increases and the penalties
become tougher.

We explored variability in the sample by playing a series of standard gambles with the students and
identifying ex post each individual’s level of risk aversion. We find the individuals’ risk preferences
significantly affect their valuations of the illicit essays offered.

A degree of caution is required when considering results from such a stated preference study as one needs
to consider how reliable and realistic the choices, and implicit valuations they reflect, are. When
considering such hypothetical bias one is wary of systematic misreporting of preferences. It might be the
case that students did not treat the choices sufficiently seriously and over-report their willingness to buy.
However, in this study there may be an opposite effect: the fear of self incrimination may have caused
respondents to under-report their willingness to buy. Given the illicit nature of the choices we test for
significant misreporting using a Bayesian misreporting framework but find no evidence of a tendency to
misreport and over-select the “buy none” option.

It is quite remarkable how many students indicated a willingness to buy. Their apparent lack of concern at
revealing this in a survey run by academics at their own university is startling. The assurances of
confidentiality were genuine but the level of purchasing indicated was still contrary to our expectations.
Why is there such an apparent lack of stigma in revealing a willingness to purchase coursework? It may be
that the ethical line that most lecturers perceive as being crossed when such purchases are made is not that
significant to many students.

One could argue that in the modern University the student is treated as, and increasingly identifies and
mobilises as, a consumer demanding ‘value for money’. The evidence here is that many of them are
prepared to take this consumer identity one step further. Perhaps they feel that their university has
subcontracted much of the teaching they receive to Graduate Teaching Assistants and hence their
subcontracting of some of the work required of them is just another informed, rational, consumer choice.

This paper was submitted to the International Integrity & Plagiarism Conference which ran between 2004-2014. The paper was peer reviewed by an independent editorial board and features in the conference proceedings.